CHAPTER 3
EXPLORERS, TRADERS, TRAPPERS AND EXPEDITIONS On the tenth of October 1776, Catholic fathers Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante climbed a very low hill in a plain they called La Luz, ÂŤso as to survey by eye the extent of this valley," becoming the first white explorers to gaze upon the landscape of Iron County. The diary of Escalante contains the first written comment on this land and its inhabitants. 1 Before British colonists established a single colony along the eastern seaboard of North America, the Spanish came northward from Mexico in 1540 to explore and in 1598 to place missions in their province of New Mexico. The settlement of San Diego in 1769 and Monterey a year later created a need for a route between the fledgling California missions and the better-established outpost at Santa Fe. Efforts to open a direct southern route from New Mexico to California were thwarted by the rugged terrain and hostile Indian tribes. Consequently, in 1776, Father Dominguez was commissioned to find a feasible route from Santa Fe to Monterey by going north, then west. He choose twenty-four-year-old Fray Escalante as second in command and to serve as party diarist. It was the diary of 29
